July 22nd, 1997

Firstly I only saw the signage to the Spruce Woods Provincial Park at the last minute and drove past the entrance, then the visitor services/museum was closed (closed Tuesday and Wednesday). Then we had to pay $5 just for the privilege of being there.

This didn't put me in a very spiritual frame of mind as we began our stroll around the dunes, which are a mere 4 sq km final remnant of a much larger area and one that will disappear for ever in a matter of decades.

There are notices everywhere telling us how fragile this environment is, and how we should keep to trails. So of course there are bloody great footprints all over the place, just as if it's the beach or someone's sandpit... I just don't get the mentality of these people, who make the effort to come all the way here, then clump all over everything, pretty well guaranteeing that the unfortunate flora and fauna that depends on these dunes will soon be extinct. Goodbye skink. Goodbye hognose snake.

And the camel? Well nearby in the little town of Glenboro is a statue of a camel, erected to celebrate the proximity of Manitoba's "desert". I bet they got it second-hand from somewhere, because narry a camel ever walked on Spirit Sands!

Everywhere we walk (trying not to destroy everything in our path) there are grasshoppers with bright yellow wings, many of them busy mating. From the bushes and trees comes a thrilling strigillation from the cicadas that grows as we approach and fades as we pass. We see skink foot and tail prints but no skink. Wasps scout along the trail for flies to take back into their burrows.

The dunes are an anticlimax — we've been spoiled by the Oregon Dunes. Many visitors don't even bother to walk through them, taking a ride in a horse-drawn cart instead.

Perhaps in early spring, when the sand will be smooth and unsullied, or after torrential rain, the dunes would convey more of the awe that native peoples used to feel here. But to me they feel too ravaged. We take a few half-hearted photographs and retreat from the heat to the nearby park, which is just a park, designed for humans who want to swim and make noises and buy ice-cream...

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